


A Welcome Laugh

by sigrid_sloan



Series: Too Long for this World [1]
Category: The Old Guard (2020 Movie), The Old Guard (2020)
Genre: Bisexual Andromache, Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not canon with the graphic novel, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Short & Sweet, They bone immediately after this, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25216114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigrid_sloan/pseuds/sigrid_sloan
Summary: Quynh had been quiet, these last twenty years.“It is not the same without Lykon,” she’d say, setting out her bedroll or snapping a man's neck.
Relationships: Andromache/Quynh
Series: Too Long for this World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826884
Comments: 14
Kudos: 224





	A Welcome Laugh

Quynh had been quiet, these last twenty years.

“It is not the same without Lykon,” she’d say, setting out her bedroll or snapping a man's neck.

Andromache understood deeply. Lykon was her lover, her world, the only constant aside from Quynh for a millennium. He was gentle and resolute, the guiding calm that reminded her both when to set down her axe and when to never let it go.

There were moments (perhaps high in the Caucus mountains or parched in low salt flats) when Andromache would miss his laugh the most. It was a shockingly silly thing; a noise that would fly out of Lykon like a bird fumbling out of a cage. She loved how he allowed himself moments like that. Silliness. Stillness. Both of those balanced with a warrior’s pragmatism.

Quynh was nothing like Lykon. For all the ways she was different, she was equally remarkable. Andromache couldn’t help the flutter in her heart when she watched the woman behead an enemy or clumsily braid her hair. Andromache thought it rude to ask her how old she was, how many lovers _she_ had lost, too.

“I keep my stuff in here,” Andromache announced as they entered a hidden cave, setting her axe beside a pile of 2,000-year-old pottery. The two women made their way into the cavern; it had taken them weeks to trek into Gaul, and Andromache was eager for rest.

Quynh used her flint and sword to quickly light the torches clumsily sticking out of each wall. “I heard water nearby on our way in. Are there fish?”

“Tiny ones, all bones,” Andromache mumbled. She was bent over a weathered chest, brushing aside cave dust and spiders.

“Just like you,” Quynh teased. Andromache couldn’t help but smile.

Andromache paused, as her fingers ran alongside a long wooden club. She gripped it tight and pulled it from the chest.

“Quynh,” she said, automatically. Quynh turned her head, and went quiet.

“He would want you to keep it,” she said. “Didn’t he give you lessons?”

“Yes,” Andromache said.

She looked at the wooden club, the length of her extended arm, ending in a knob and polished so the mahogany shone in the torchlight.

It was beautiful.

But Andromache did not feel pain when she looked on it, or when she remembered her old lover’s well-intentioned lessons.

(It was a field in Sweden)

(He laughed at her technique, and asserted she’d be dead in minutes if she ever faced down an actual lion)

(She playfully dislocated his arm in response)

(He laughed even harder)

But the memory was interrupted.

Andromache felt calloused fingers overlap her own.

She looked – Quynh stood behind her, hand resting over her own.

Andromache felt herself hold her breath.

“Quynh—”

The warmth of her hand vanished. Quynh stepped back.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I thought you were finished holding it—”

“Quynh, it is all right,” Andromache interrupted.

Tentatively, the warm hand returned above her own.

“It does not hurt me to look upon what was Lykon’s,” Andromache said, her voice just shy of full volume, “Twenty years is too long to mourn, even for Us.”

“You were his,” Quynh said, so kindly, so quietly, her hands so gentle and warm, “I do not want to overstep.”

Andromache sighed. Her eyes rolled upward. She did think of Lykon, briefly, in that moment, and when she did it was of the sound of laughter that always followed his… Quynh’s. A snort that tumbled into a cheery trill. Quynh had been quiet these last twenty years, but in that moment Andromache realized it was because she had been quiet for _her_. An act of respect, of space, to allow her to mourn. Quynh could not see it, but Andromache smiled broadly.

“Quynh,” Andromache asserted, “I have not made love in twenty years. I am _begging you_ to overstep.”

Quynh snorted.

Andromache laughed.

Their shared laughter bounced off the walls of the cave, encircling them as they embraced and kissed, happy, in the torchlight.


End file.
